1. By my life, you have made easy what is not easy
Whether to heed advice or to give sound advice

2. You have made it easy for me, though frivolity is as its name
Despitefulness and affection are not from the produce of onions

3. Rather it is from the noble plant whose branches
Tower over others, not wasteland or camel-thorn

4. Indeed in God's cause the affection I have fostered
With the pure, fresh water of an easy nature

5. Yet when I tasted the fruits I found them
More bitter than affliction and more ruinous than murder

6. Indeed, let me not be seen by people meeting
One who tends to good nor excellence

7. Nor revering an ignoramus for his wealth
Even if he is pious and wise

8. How many an arbiter rules justly against his peers
When given authority but swerves from justice

9. He laments the injustice done to freemen
Yet gives them greater injustice, purchasing humiliation

10. Had one led by ignorance transgressed, I would pardon him
But one led by eminence, how far from ignorance!

11. To you, Abu Abdillah, I send this
Confidently, hoping for your forbearance and generosity

12. I have indulged in a presumptuous manner
So if you say "Gently!" I will walk gently

13. But I must speak words
Neither unjust nor jesting

14. Are you not he whom I purified and chose
Preferring you long ago over wealth and family?

15. Are you not he in whom I placed hope and treasure
So why have you neglected my plantation and busied yourself with the withering vine?

16. Let us move beyond all this petty talk
And speak instead of loftier matters

17. Shall I recount something like your affair, a paragon,
Then exit it like a fallen wretch, vile?

18. Was I the mote in the eye, not the sufferer?
Or equally guilty in that gathering?

19. Was my neglect of my plantation and busying myself
The same when I am counted among the date's core?

20. Indeed, does a friend not mourn a friend's death
Even if he was not stained by spear or sword?

21. Indeed, where are those who revered my sanctity?
For yours has superseded it, by your reckoning

22. Indeed, where are those who guarded my reconciliation?
Indeed, where are those who kept their good treatment of me

23. Indeed, where are those who maintained closeness and distance toward me?
Have the days spilled me out until I see

24. What I see of humiliation and disgrace?
Awaken, Abu Abdillah, for they are

25. Slumbering, not valuing a man of fine qualities
Do you shun me though our bond is well-tied

26. And draw near one of wavering allegiance?
That is not for any sin save that my seclusion

27. Lacks any blemish, as you know, nor looseness
Consider that beasts and I are equal

28. Save for our justice in tearing apart and disemboweling
We are superior in preferring good and doing it

29. While equal to beasts in eating
Do we not have sanctity in your eyes

30. Or does appearance have rights over appearance?
Does the bridle of weeping and crying for nights

31. That protected us from rising and plunder have value?
I have given you examples admonishing a preacher

32. And you are far above any saying or speech
Our relatedness through scripture binds us

33. Though I know little of prosody or grammar
Do you not see that betrayal destroyed the son of Bulbul

34. Though he had horses and footmen?
You still urge him though I see what I see

35. So may God turn your guidance from the ways of dissolving ties
Do not excuse yourself except with what you are worthy of

36. For you were not given a branch or origin
How many a reproacher made his reproach nobly to you

37. Yet you rewarded him with glory and abundant prize
Just so, we knew you to coddle a child

38. So how do I find you now fully grown?
Do not busy yourself blaming my address

39. Lest you turn the chest of affection into diverging dunes
To God I complain that my poetry is wronged

40. And that for beneficence I dwell in barren springs
Your praise of al-Buhturi and affection for him

41. And my praise of you - God forbid your minds be deranged!
If you say he has superior merit in poetry, unveiled

42. What can hive-born drones claim of the bees' honey?
Praises that flow for him the likes of which

43. Would burden the truthful and weigh down the load-bearers
Is it that other group you know

44. Nay, the other group - what rupture is like fickleness?
Did he not frown at you with praise that

45. Crept to the line's edge like ants over the ground?
He insulted you with contrived insults and babble

46. And the beauty is not adorned by ivory and withering
So he gained what he proclaimed in covertness

47. Protected, though he gave you the dregs of the register
It was insult that he insulted you and refused

48. To busy you with his poetry, the epitome of busyness
So I contended with him among you with praise like

49. Fresh youth or polishing of a sword
Yet you rewarded me with what I deserve

50. Of deprivation, denial, refusal, and abandonment
And rewarded him with what he deserves

51. Of benevolence, favor, sympathy, and connection
I rained down, extinguishing the lightning bolts around you

52. Yet you did not distinguish the lightning from the rain
Indeed you distinguished with the discernment of one confused

53. What warped spindle resembles the sturdy one?
To God I complain that my sea is abundant

54. While I am stinted of benevolence in barren springs
If sustenance sufficed to veil my face I would have guarded its water

55. And silenced its speech from pouring out generosity and flood
And spared myself people I see

56. Consider me worthless though I am not
And liken me to a man that if I went astray

57. They would gain a share in that straying
Praise that exalts them and protection

58. For their honor, supported like grains of sand
That is not how al-Buhturi treats a companion

59. Nor partly, in religious duty or voluntary offering
I am not al-Buhturi's reed-pipe and pleats

60. Though on occasion a stallion mounts a stallion
I testified to his sincerity in poetry

61. While I am no half-breed nor mule in it
Indeed, that is the loud-voiced wine-strainer, I know him

62. While I strain what is not sifted
But fortune he attained, and sanctity

63. I see his deficiency supplied, supplying deficiency
Balbak and its people denied me

64. Nay, the entire land - Baghdad, home of raisins
I see safety for my friend from my injustice but no safety

65. For him from my justice, though he is most just
Let no man be deluded by affability

66. For I am a man who inclines to firmness
In the sword lies the deciding, beneath a polishing that adorns it

67. And in me lies that polishing and decisive quality
This is no idle threat of mine out of ignorance

68. Rather, it is information of resolute intention
I make my address pleasant in your reproach

69. For all reproach has pleasantry and eyeliner
In my fervor my strutting has eased and swayed

70. Excuse it if it sways from the litter
Do not deny the polishing of brotherhood I possess

71. For if the pommel is stamped, it is burnished by the polishing
Whatever I say little of among you, I am still your brother

72. In every bitter or dragged state
I am not one to eat rotten meat

73. Nor one to make halal tasty meat
To what extent is sustenance hoarded from me

74. When my sustenance is from God alone, not any lord
I was never forward with wives

75. That a lord would abandon me, pleased with the lord